20 Aug 2011

Holy wars... So many efforts were wasted in there... People try to convince others what is better and why...
Linux world is not alone here. So many battles happened in discussions what is the best distribution. I expected another episode of the battle when published post "What is your best favourite KDE distro?". That post quickly became branch of PCLinuxOS forum: so many PCLOS users took part in commenting.
But that's human nature: we are so lazy to write sometimes... To give users of other distributions equal right and not to bother them too much, I opened voting on this blog, where users were not required to write anything unless they wanted to. Instead, there was drop-down menu with list of different KDE-based distributions.
Voting was opened 9 days ago and planned to be closed on 20th of August. It is now time to announce results. I must admit, results are not exactly what I expected. But they reflect true situation on the KDE "market", I can't object.

You can see that both Kubuntu and OpenSuSE won competition with equal results, and these results have significant breakaway from rest distributions.
Once we can see the results, let me quote some comments left by users who took part in voting.

Ubuntu with Gnome/Unity (voted for Other)

Sorry, but since what time GNOME/Unity became KDE distribution?

debian cu kde?:D lol (voted for OpenSuSE)

What is funny in this combination? KDE is one of officially supported DEs for Debian.

I like debian for it's stability. Isn't CTKarch based on openbox? (voted for Debian)

You're right, CTK Arch is based on Openbox. I don't understand why I put CTK Arch into the list of KDE distros. But it still got some points. ;-)

To me is slackware, I really like its simplicity. Mint KDE is also a good one, they are somehow opposite.Choose Slackware if you want simplicity, and Mint if you want support for almost everything out of the box, but a more bloated OS in you PC (voted for Slackware)

You're right. Mint team puts everything to make system suitable for everyone. Sometimes even too much.

+ Polished, Easy, Out of the box, Innovative, ORIGINAL, Humble Community- Small community, Small repository, Need more international/English support (voted for Pardus)

So much true!

Voting form is still open, but I will not constantly review results. If I find anything interesting there, I will let you, my readers, know. Please stay connected!UPDATE: new results were published!
If you decided to give any distribution a try yourself, you can always use Buy Linux CDs site to obtain CD with it. Many distributions listed in the voting are available on that site directly. Others can be ordered via special comments/order form.

About DarkDuck
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@DDConception dates are hard to pin down...better to exclude. One thing this does reveal is how poorly some of the older distributions are doing in terms of hanging on to users...for instance Fedora wasn't in a good position in your initial assessment and if we look at it in durational terms it is doing worse still. Distributions that are derivatives of an older distribution could be seen as backing the derived from code so Debian would be very well represented if thought of in that way. In short there are quite a few factors at play here.

@Gladys:I have a gut feeling that KDE is not Fedora's priority #1. As well as RedHat's. CentOS is only released in GNOME version with K coming as additional package.I would distinguish distributions which come as KDE-only (Pardus), KDE-as-many and #1 (Slackware), KDE-as-many but not #1 (Ubuntu, Fedora) and and KDE-as-stepdaughter (CentOS). This split will allow as to weight the number of users proportionally.

Well, I have little time w/ kde but, kubuntu & pclinixos seem to work fine on most things I toss them at, so I find I use them most of the time.KDE has more bells/whistles than I want to play with. That said, I drag in KDE on everything, k3b, k9copy, etc...I want stuff to do what I tell it, if that comes from another DE...so be it...

To everyone:You may be guessing this post is a new voting place. No, it is not. Although, voting form is still open.I am sorry, I can't and won't reply everyone on this post.

And then... special reply to Dave Given.There were ~90 users voted by the closing time. This is good statistical figure itself.Then, up until now there are ~25 users more, which makes total number ~115. And you know what? Top of the list is still: Kubuntu and OpenSuSE head-to-head. With Debian, Chakra and Others coming in the next three. Will you now object about incorrect sample?

@Anonymous:The point is in statistics. Sample is large enough to eliminate any random fakes. Since sample grows without much changes in voting results, it proves itself to be valid.Whole point of statistical fake in flash-mob happened in my first post got me to the voting idea.